How long does it take?

Sometimes I am asked how long it takes to make a card.  It depends on whether I have an idea of what stamps I want to use and whether I have an idea of how I want it to turn out.  

I had the opportunity one day to stamp out some of the images from Kimino Kids.  This set is now retired, but if any of you remember it, you will recall there were two little girls, a fan, umbrella and a string of chinese lanterns.  My original thought was to colour in the lanterns in bright colours, cut them out and then string them across a card with the little girls underneath glued onto a circle for effect.  So, after I coloured in the lanterns, they were too light, so I went over them with aqua pencils.  The little girls were then coloured in too, but they looked too bright, so I thought I could soften them with tissue paper, but instead of crinkling up the paper first I just stuck it down on the little girls, realised my mistake, but decided I liked the soft subtle effect so cut the little girls out.  After playing with the lanterns for a while I didn't like them after all, so after about 4 hours this is the layout I came up with.  And then when I decided it wasn't too bad after all, I did that "just one more thing" and ruined it.  

I put clear KindyGlitz on the exclamation mark in the greeting, but it made the ink bleed!  Sometimes you should just leave well enough alone.  So long story short, some cards just come together, other like this one take time.  Now I wish I kept some of those lanterns for the left hand corner.